Projects & Files

Every Throughline project is a .thrl file, saved wherever you choose: your Documents folder, an external drive, any folder you like. You can see it, move it, copy it, and send it like any other document.

There’s no account and no Throughline cloud. Your files go where you put them, and nowhere else.

The home screen

Throughline opens on the home screen. Under Recently opened you get a card for each project file you opened, most recent first, showing where the file lives and when you last opened it. The top three also show their logline, cast, and beat count. The first nine cards show right away. Click Show all below them for the rest, and Show fewer to fold the list again. Click a card to pick up where you left off. To keep related projects together, put them in folders.

Three buttons sit above the list:

Create New Project: asks for a title and, if you have one, a logline, then asks where to save the file.
Open…: opens an existing .thrl file.
Import Screenplay: brings in a Fountain, Final Draft, PDF, or plain text screenplay as a new project, then asks where to save it. See Importing.

Below them, the Demos section holds the bundled demo project, ready to explore.

Each card has a ⋮ menu:

Show in Finder (on Windows, Show in Explorer): jumps to the file on disk.
Duplicate…: makes a new project from all of this one or from the parts you pick, such as only its Characters and Settings. See Duplicating a project.
Merge with…: brings another copy of this project into it. Shown with Merge Projects turned on in Settings → Lab.
Move to folder: puts the card into one of your folders, or into a new one.
Remove from Projects Menu: takes the card off your home screen. The file itself is never touched.

The demo’s card has Duplicate… and Delete. Duplicate the demo if you’d like to keep building on it as your own project, or to start a story of your own with its cast.

Folders

Folders keep related projects together on the home screen: the episodes of a series, say, or your short films. Each folder is a colored frame with its name on a tab.

Create a folder: click New folder above Recently opened, type a name and press Enter. Or pick Move to folder › New folder… in a card’s ⋮ menu.
Drag and drop: drag a project card onto another one to put both in a new folder. Drag a card onto a folder to add it, and drag it out of the folder to take it out again.
Add a project: in the card’s ⋮ menu, pick Move to folder and then the folder. Remove from folder takes it out again.
Rename, recolor, dissolve: use the ⋮ button on the folder’s frame, or double-click the folder’s name to rename it. Pick a new color from the swatches in that menu. Dissolve folder puts its projects back in the list as loose cards.
Undo: press Cmd/Ctrl+Z on the home screen to take back your last change: a new, renamed, recolored or dissolved folder, a project moved in or out, or a card removed from the list. A dissolved folder comes back with its projects. Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+Z (or Ctrl+Y on Windows) redoes it. The home screen keeps its own undo history until you quit, separate from your projects’ histories, so undo inside a project never touches your folders.

A folder takes the place of its most recently opened project in Recently opened. Its projects sit in a stack, like a stack of cards on the board: the most recently opened one in front, the others peeking out above it with their titles. Hover over a title to bring that card to the front, and click it to open the project.

Folders only live on the home screen of this computer. They never touch, move or rename your files, and they aren’t saved in your .thrl files. If you remove a project from the list, it stays in its folder and comes back there the next time you open it. The demo can’t go into a folder.

When a file has moved

If a project’s file was moved, renamed, or deleted outside Throughline, its card says “File not found. Click to locate it.” and offers two ways forward:

Locate…: point Throughline at the file’s new place.
Save elsewhere…: saves the project to a new file, so nothing is lost even if the original is gone.

Opening a project

Open… (Cmd+O on macOS, Ctrl+O on Windows) opens a .thrl file itself, not a copy of it: everything you change is saved back to that file. You can also double-click a .thrl file in Finder or Explorer.

To work on a copy instead, use Duplicate….

Duplicating a project

Duplicate… makes a new project from an existing one. You’ll find it in a card’s ⋮ menu on the home screen, in the project menu, and on macOS in the File menu (Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+S).

A dialog asks for the new project’s name and what it starts with. The name is filled in for you: “Episode 1” becomes “Episode 2”, and any other title gets ” - Copy” on the end. Change it if you like.

Everything is checked to begin with, which gives you a full copy. Uncheck the parts you don’t want. Writing the next episode, a sequel or a spin-off? Keep only Characters, Relationships and Settings, and none of the story.

Characters, with their color, their details and their place in the Constellation
- Relationships between them. These need Characters, so they’re grayed out without them.
Settings, stacks included
Beats and scene text
Structure cards
Story arcs
Sparks
Recycling bin

Some parts depend on each other, and the dialog tells you when one is missing:

Without Characters, Beats have no cast, and there are no relationships.
Without Settings, Beats have no Setting.
Without Beats, relationships come as they are at the story start, and Story arcs keep their names and poles but start empty.
Without structure cards, the Beats stacked on a structure card take its place.
The recycling bin keeps only the kinds of cards you copy.

Click Save Copy… and choose where to save the new file. Throughline suggests the project’s name as the file name. If you pick another file name, the project keeps the name from the dialog. The new project opens right away. If the original is in a folder, the new project joins that folder too.

Your author info and title page lines, the editor mode, the project language and your export settings always come along. Without Beats, the logline, the date and version lines of the title page and the dialogue and scene number counters start fresh.

From then on the two projects are separate files. Changing a Character in one doesn’t change it in the other, and the original project stays exactly as it was. To bring two copies back together later, use Merge Projects.

Saving

Throughline saves as you go. There’s no Save command to remember.

Most of the time you won’t see any save status at all. A message appears beside the project title only when something needs your attention:

“Couldn’t save, retrying”: Throughline couldn’t write to the file for a moment and keeps trying.
“File not found”: the file was moved or deleted while the project was open. Click Save elsewhere… to save it to a new location.

File commands

On macOS these live in the File menu. On Windows the same shortcuts work with Ctrl.

Command	Shortcut
New Project…	`Cmd/Ctrl+N`
Open…	`Cmd/Ctrl+O`
Duplicate…	`Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+S`
Merge with… (with Merge Projects turned on)
Open Recent (macOS, your six most recent files)
Show in Finder

Inside a project, click the project title in the top bar to open the project menu, which has Duplicate…, Merge with… (with Merge Projects turned on), Show in Finder (on Windows, Show in Explorer), and Restore from Autosave.

Autosaves

On top of saving every change, Throughline keeps regular autosaves of your project in a folder named <project name>_autosaves, right next to your .thrl file. Pick how often they’re made and how many to keep in Settings.

Some copies are kept because of a decision you made, and those carry a label in their name, such as (changed elsewhere), (before merge), or (legacy THRL 1.5) for the original of a file updated from an older version. Those are never deleted automatically.

Every autosave is a normal .thrl file. Double-click one to open it as its own project, look around, and take what you need.

Restoring an autosave

Restore from Autosave, in the project menu, lists the project’s autosaves, plus any backups made by earlier versions of Throughline. Restoring keeps your current state in the autosaves folder first, so a restore can always be undone.

When a file changes elsewhere

When you open a project whose file changed since you last saved it on this computer, for example on another computer or by another writer, Throughline opens the new version. A short notice says who or what changed it, such as “Anna changed “Pilot” since you last saved it on this computer.”

If you also have changes that were never saved to the file, for example because Throughline quit before it could save them, a dialog, “Unsaved changes”, asks first. Each choice keeps both versions:

Open the file: opens the file as it is now. Your unsaved changes are kept in the autosaves folder.
Restore unsaved changes: saves your unsaved changes over the file. The file’s current version is kept in the autosaves folder.
Keep both as separate files…: saves your unsaved changes as a new file, then opens the file in this window.

If the file changes while the project is open, Throughline never swaps it in silently. A dialog, “This file was changed elsewhere”, explains what happened and offers three choices. Each one keeps both versions:

Load the changed file: replaces what’s open with the file. What was open is kept in the autosaves folder.
Keep what’s open here: saves what’s open over the file. The changed file is kept in the autosaves folder.
Keep both as separate files…: saves what’s open as a new file, then loads the changed file in this window.

Files from other versions of Throughline

Saved by a newer version: Throughline asks before opening it, because editing it here may lose anything that uses newer features. Choose Open Anyway, Update Throughline, or Cancel.
Saved by an earlier version: the file needs to be updated to open. This doesn’t change any of your content, and the original is kept in the autosaves folder, labelled with its format version, such as (legacy THRL 1.5). Choose Update or Cancel.

Using more than one computer

Throughline doesn’t sync anything itself, but a project file opens on any computer with Throughline installed. If you move your files between computers yourself, avoid editing the same project in two places at the same time. If it happens anyway, the changed elsewhere dialog keeps both versions.

Upgrading from an earlier Throughline

Earlier versions of Throughline kept projects in a library inside the app. The first time you launch this version, Throughline asks you to move them out: click Export Projects…, choose a folder, and each project is saved there as a .thrl file, including in a folder synced by Dropbox, Google Drive, or Syncthing. Your exported projects then wait for you under Recently opened. The demo stays built in.